Prepositions at the end of a sentence? OK, per Strunk and White..

[Chronos]

Second Mountie: You should have said “Go back from where you came”, or, in the proper Queen’s English, “Go back thou from whence thou didst come.”

I don’t know if that’s the actual line from the movie, but “from whence” is incorrect. “Whence” already has “from” built-in, as it were, so the (more) correct form is “Go back thou whence thou didst come.” (I’m unsure if there are any other errors there).

[pulykamell]

@Demo

FYI: Strunk and White’s Elements of Style is available online at Bartleby.com.

It should be noted that this isn’t the entire text of Strunk & White’s Element’s of Style, just the part originally written by William Strunk.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

As long as we’re fighting ignorance, lemme wetblanket y’all by pointing out that Churchill probably didn’t say it after all.

Still a damn good quote, though.

Daniel

[Acsenray]

@Chronos

I don’t know if that’s the actual line from the movie, but “from whence” is incorrect. “Whence” already has “from” built-in, as it were, so the (more) correct form is “Go back thou whence thou didst come.” (I’m unsure if there are any other errors there).

Personally, on the rare occasions I use “whence,” I dispense with the redundant “from.” But such redundancy is indulged by Shakespeare, I believe, so who’s to say what is correct?

[Polycarp]

@acsenray

Personally, on the rare occasions I use “whence,” I dispense with the redundant “from.” But such redundancy is indulged by Shakespeare, I believe, so who’s to say what is correct?

Redundancy is an issue in logic, not in English usage. Something as simple as agreement (I am, you are, he is, they are) is a redundancy. “Whence” by itself means “from where” but “from whence” is equally good English.

[mhendo]

@Polycarp

Redundancy is an issue in logic, not in English usage. Something as simple as agreement (I am, you are, he is, they are) is a redundancy. “Whence” by itself means “from where” but “from whence” is equally good English.

I’m not sure i completely agree with your assessment that simple agreement is necessarily redundant. After all, redundancy in linguistic terms means, according to the OED:

**c. Linguistics. The element or degree of predictability in a language arising from knowledge of its structure; the fact of superfluity of information in a piece of language. **

Similarly, redundant means:

**f. Of a language: containing material which is predictable from context or a knowledge of its structure; also of a language feature, predictable in this way. **

These definitions square with my general understanding of the term, which is that something is logically redundant if its addition either confuses or adds nothing to the original meaning, and if its removal does not alter the meaning or make the term in question unclear.

Now, you can make a very good case for some forms of agreement exhibiting logical redundancy. “I am” for example. After all, if you use the word “am,” who else could you be talking about but yourself? Many languages, like Spanish for example, recognize this, and it’s perfectly acceptable to say “Soy…” rather than “Yo soy…” for “I am.” Indeed, the pronoun is often only added for the sake of emphasis.

But in English, surely it’s a little more difficult to make the case for redundancy in an instance such as “You are.” After all, this particular construction of the verb “to be” could be preceded by “we,” “they,” or any one of a number of more specific terms. So, removing the word “you” might make it unclear eactly who you’re talking about. Surely, in such a case, it’s difficult to describe agreement as redundant?

Of course, it’s quite possible that there’s an aspect of logic and/or a definition of redundancy that i’m unaware of. In that case, i’d be happy if someone would enlighten me.

[JRDelirious]

@RealityChuck

Note that, in most cases (even Captain Amazing’s example), the sentences are not ended with a preposition. They are ended with the particle of a phrasal verb (prepositions are commonly used as particles, which creates the confusion).

The truth is that there are some verbs in the English language that are made up of two (or even three) words.

Thus “to throw out” is a different verb than “to throw.”
“To hear” is different than “to hear of” (though they’re close).
“To Put,” “to put up” and “to put up with” are three different verbs.

It helps to remember that in its grammatical “kernel”, English is a Germanic language, and German is full of these kinds of turns.

Also, many people tend to assume that a specific set of souds (or letters on a page) always has the same grammatical function – that’s not necessarily so in English.